Here I am.

Winging my way back from a long business trip – I left 10 days ago, and with any luck, will finally stumble home some time in the wee hours Wednesday.

The experience was a whirlwind tour of the best and worst airports, airlines and aircraft the friendly skys have to offer. Perhaps there is something of value you can find in this. Otherwise, I just spilled ~1,300 words from seat 1A for naught.

First leg: Continental from LaGuardia: We leave November 10 – damned daylight savings day. Our early 6:35am flight becomes 5:35 am – an ungodly hour to travel, even with the bonus “fall back” hour. Paranoid I would arrive late, I get picked up extra early, and dropped off at La Guardia for Continental flight 633 to Dallas by way of Houston a little after 4am.

The Continental desk is a mess – there is a huge line, except for those who got an online boarding pass. I selected seats on the phone with an agent, but I do not recall the suggestion to print boarding passes (That might have been helpful). Because the tickets were booked via Orbitz, the upgrade to 1st class is $857. No thanks.

Without the printed boarding tickets, we must endure this l o n g line. Despite being there 90 minutes before the flight, I begin to wonder if we are going to make the plane.

If this an attempt at behavior modification, to encourage people to print e-boarding passes, it may have backfired. I make two mental notes: 1) Always print out the boarding pass; 2) Don’t fly Continental anymore.

45 minutes later, we are at the desk. We pay $20 per bag. I ask about the upgrade to 1st class (the machine says $150), but the harried agent suggests we can do it at the desk. We breeze through security, but at the gate, they tell us its $857.

Fuck Continental.

At least I reserved an emergency aisle, so the 3 hour flight has extra leg room. Reiterate the don’t fly Continental mental note. (Flight quality B+, Check in experience F)

We get to Houston, a quick switch to an Embarcadero Expressjet for the 55 minute hop to Dallas. Straight from the airport to the new Cowboys stadium – a gorgeous public facility, a fitting shrine to the religion that football is in Texas. We are in the 1st level above the field, corner of the end zone. Spectacular seats for about $100 on stub-hub. I spend most of the time there marveling over the building, eating junk food, and staring at the cheerleaders’ tight white short shorts and even tighter asses. I even manage to watch some football – the Cowboys romp the Seahawks, 37 – 17.

Second leg: By Thursday, we are done with Dallas, and head to Austin on Southwest (2877). They are a reliable workman’s airline – efficient, reasonably priced, well run. You could do a whole lot worse than Southwest. 35 minutes later, we are in Austin. (A minus check in, B plus flight)

Third leg: At the end of the day, my partners and I part ways – they go back to respective offices in NY and Boston, and I go on to Detroit for a book fair presentation for Bailout Nation. American Airlines is the carrier for this flight. At the desk, the electronic kiosk offers me an upgrade to first class for $45 to Dallas, and $90 to Detroit. I figure its not worth it just for the 35 minute ride to Dallas, so I don’t select that, but pay for thee upgrade to Detroit (2.5 hours plus). But the bag is $20 without both legs, and if the kiosk warned me of that, I might have paid the $25 difference. (AA loses points for that)

On the plane, I immediately regret the missed upgrade (693). Seat 30F is the smallest coach seat I have ever sat in. I am practically kissing the seatback in front of me – and its not even reclined. Simply awful. (Check in B-, flight F)

Well, the first of several 1st class rides are coming up, and I tough it out.

I make the connection, and its okay. The food was terrible, the seats fair. For 1st class, flight 2204 was not even aspirational luxury. No wonder the legacy airlines are getting their asses kicked.

The next morning, I give a speech to a room full of business people, real estate agents, auto management, and other authors. I sign books afterwards, and then . . .

Fourth leg: . . . its off to the airport 3 hours early. I have a 1st class ticket for the 5 hour flight from Detroit’s ironically oversized airport (whoever planned this must have been wholly unaware of the decades long decline in the American auto industry) to San Francisco, courtesy of the Detroit Book Fair.

My assumption that the 1st class Northwest ticket gains me entrance into the sky lounge is proven to be too optimistic. Northwest only grants access to international 1st class ticket holders. I politely inquire what we can do, and she offers me a $50 one day pass, but does not tell me what it gets me. I decide against it, as there is but 90 minutes to the flight.

All I can think of is that announcement they make when landing: “We know you have a choice in air travel…”

Strike Northwest from my list of preferred carriers.

The seats are pretty good, the food okay (they serve two options, and by the time they got to seat 5C, there was only one choice left.   (Check in/Sky lounge D, flight B+)

Fifth leg: My WSJ panel on Tuesday had been canceled, so I change my Virgin America flight online from Wednesday to tonite. Its a seamless, easy process.

The trip home (VX24) was the best leg of all — Seat 1 A. Everything Virgin America is shiney new and well thought out. I can only find a few things to nit pick about: The Virgin Upper Class lounge is $35, but it includes showers, Wifi, unlimited food, and booze.  (A party bargain for next Saturday night). They even tell you they will get you in time for your flight.

Its delightful — except for two things: Its outside security, so after all that niceness, you have to fight your way thru the serpentine lines. Oh, and, the hostess forgot to call me when it was time to go. I leave the lounge at boarding time, and Ack! My heart drops when I see the security line. Luckily, I make it with 15 minutes to spare.

Virgin America is the first flight where my ass touches leather. Big adjustable seats, free in flight WiFi, power for the laptop, an excellent meal (mushu chicken and eggplant — it was surprisingly, very good). Even the stewardesses are uncommonly hot looking. Sure, the entertainment system crashed twice — not very encouraging at 33,000 feet. But just about everything else was fine to excellent. (A- airport, A+ flight).

Rather than whine, let me make these suggestions to Sir Richard Branson regarding small tweaks to his airline:

• Serving dinner at 4pm local time is wrong. 6pm is the earliest you should

• For a $1500 ticket holder, the $35 is kinda adding insult to injury. Build it into the fare.

• Put the Lounge on the other side of security.

• Since you know who is sitting in what seat, why not save my music/entertainment  preferences? Rebuilding that every flight is a waste.

• Make the Upperclass lounge ticket good for the arrival airport also — that’s where I more likely to want to shower — AFTER the flight.

• I hate movies on plane where they are edited — it would be appreciated if it was disclosed if it is edited or unedited (i.e., ruined).

All told, it was a very productive trip, but I am really looking forward to tonite — sleeping in my own bed, next to my own woman . . .

What could be more appropriate while I wait than to take a look at how California, trashed though it is financially, is deploying Federal stimulus money.

The interactive map is pretty damn slick:

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click for wicked cool map app

chart courtesy of California Stimulus Map, design by stamen

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Hat tip Flowing Data

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“There remains, I believe, an absence of the acceptance of collective responsibility for what has happened. I remained unconvinced that all senior management have taken on board the need to change and operate in a genuinely different manner.”

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American capitalist never apologize — instead, they rationalize away their involvement, then grab a government bailout.

That’s a shame: A parade of disgraced CEOs — from Fuld to O’Neal to Mozilo — genuflecting and begging a 1,000 pardons, would be a delicious sight to behold . . .

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Source:
Financial Regulations Chief Chides British Banks
JULIA WERDIGIER
NYT, November 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/global/10fsa.html

In both charts, the current contraction is the worst on record for the time periods (1973, 1964 forward)

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Retail Sales: 5 Recessions

State Tax Revenues (1964- 2009)

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Source:
State Tax Revenues Show Record Drop, For Second Consecutive Quarter
Lucy Dadayan and Donald J. Boyd
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government
http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/state_revenue_report/2009-10-15-SRR_77.pdf

This is very similar to the recent data from the NAR regarding September existing home sales. That seasonally adjusted data made it look like things got much better in the month; It was more accurate to say that the traditional fall off in sales that month was not nearly as bad as usual.

With the NFP, the usual seasonal fall off also turned out to be not nearly as bad as is usual for October. I am not sure how much the stimulus is effecting the employment data, but my suspicion is that its impact is far less than the home buyer tax credit is effecting existing home sales.

Here’s Norris:

“The economic reactions over the weekend to Friday’s employment report all started from the assumption that things grew much worse in October. The unemployment rate leaped to 10.2 percent from 9.8 percent. Another 190,000 jobs vanished.

Actually, none of that happened.

In reality, the government report says unemployment rates remained steady at 9.5 percent. And the number of jobs actually rose, by 80,000. And the number of jobs for college-educated Americans rose more than in any month in the last six years . . .

For some reason, October is the month with the largest seasonal adjustment down in jobs. So the increase in the unemployment rate does not reflect people actually losing jobs. It reflects the belief that seasonal factors should have added more jobs than they did.”

The unadjusted numbers are actually constructive: they suggest that some hiring (College grads especially) is starting to improve. NSA jobs for college graduate jobs via the Household survey rose 755,000 in October — “the third-largest increase since the government started counting those figures, in 1992.”

Like the NAR data before it, the NFP data suggests that the usual drop off was less than expected.  Combined, these two present somewhat encouraging signs . . .

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Previously:
Existing Home Sales FALL in September 2009 (October 23rd, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/10/existing-home-sales-fall-in-september-09/

Source:
Did Unemployment Really Rise?
Floyd Norris
November 9, 2009, 12:41 pm
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/did-unemployment-really-rise/

I wonder if the polling results were somewhat skewed by yesterday’s market action? Human Psychology suggests that most people are not comfortable bucking the crowd, and might be more inclined to vote positively than they would otherwise during a rally.

Here are the current results:

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The overview paints a picture of state and local governments in economic distress:

• State tax collections for the second quarter of 2009 showed a record drop of 16.6%, the second consecutive quarter in which revenues fell more sharply than during any previous time on record.

• Forty-nine states saw total tax revenue fall during the quarter,
with 36 states reporting double-digit declines. Both those numbers were up from the first quarter of this year.

• For the year ending in June 2009, the period corresponding to most states’ fiscal years, total state tax collections declined by $63 billion or 8.2% from the previous year. That loss is also a record, and is roughly twice the amount states gained during the year in fiscal relief from the federal stimulus package.

• Preliminary figures for July and August for 36 early-reporting states show continued deterioration, with overall tax collections dropping 8%. Early indications of September income tax payments provide further evidence of more troubling news for states during the third quarter of 2009.

• Local tax revenue declined by 2.8% in nominal terms and 4.2% in real terms, marking the first such decline since 2003.

This data is to be expected in a deep and protracted recession. Job loss and retail sales slowdown directly reduces tax revenue. That is the nasty; Now, for the fugly:

Both Income Tax and Sales Tax Declined Sharply

State Taxes Are Faring Worse Than Local Taxes

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Source:
State Tax Revenues Show Record Drop, For Second Consecutive Quarter
Lucy Dadayan and Donald J. Boyd
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government
http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/state_revenue_report/2009-10-15-SRR_77.pdf

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The reason is that the site disabled embedding. But its more than that — the entire CRS site has become far less functional — Firefox wont play video, the calendar seems to glitch out on me when I can even find it. And half the time, the drop down links refuse to work.

Is it just me, or have they somehow made the dite less useful?

“When Andrew had a Sunday business column and he’d drop a thinly reported or loosely written piece on the desk at the last minute on Friday night,” O’Brien explained, “it made us concerned about our production schedule and, occasionally, about the credibility of our page. So, yeah, there were frequent tugs-of-war with him.”

One prominent business news figure has already speculated privately that O’Brien committed a fire-able offense by attacking Sorkin publicly. But O’Brien is a serious figure at the Times and has done impressive work at the helm of the Sunday business section. So could there be something deeper going on here than a simple airing of dirty laundry?

Anyone who has read Sorkin’s book must come away awed by the achievement of detail and narrative accomplished on such a short deadline. There is simply no one else who could have written Too Big Too Fail. No one could have leveraged the relationships to get the critical mass of detail that forced everyone to cooperate in one form or another. The book is a major achievement.

The bone of contention between O’Brien and Sorkin–who broke the news of the Paulson waiver–that became the peg of Gabriel Sherman’s story is fairly irrelevant to the success of the book (both as a document of the financial meltdown and as a bestseller.)

Buried in the story may be the bigger issue, Sorkin’s lack of interest in writing negatively about Cerberus and Blackstone, Cerberus’s Feinberg was one of Sorkin’s biggest “gets.” Setting aside the usual friction within a newsroom over credit, fame and compensation, the issue going forward is more about the value of the M&A franchise to a news organization in a transformed financial world.

The Times has already taken some hard looks at the effects of the deal culture on ordinary companies and the lives of their workers.  As Goldman Sachs continues to become a short-hand punchline for out-of-touch financial types, one can only wonder if the Times will need to shift its resources away from the M&A beat.

Source:

The Information Broker
By GABRIEL SHERMAN
New York Magazine; Nov. 9, 2009
http://nymag.com/news/media/61870/index2.html